steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

I happened across this device on some tech related weblog (whose name and url I can't remember) and had to give my opinion. I've been using WiebeTech usb/firewire "raw" drive connectors for a few years, but the solution was always a little cumbersome; unless using it in situations where portability is key. Most of the time, I'm not in one of those situations and I have popped a drive out of a machine whose power supply has gone (or some other relatively minor problem has occurred). Now that most of the machines I deal with are SATA, I was looking for a device that made quick, raw hard drive backups (or reads) easy, yet don't clutter my desk like the WiebeTech solutions do. Like I said, I happened across mention of this device and ordered two. The shipping is ridiculous; $50 because it is being shipped from Japan, but I because the cradle is $50, I figured $75 for each cradle wasn't half bad, as long as they worked as promised. (I've found that some caddies/adapters do not perform even close to USB 2.0 specs. One transfered data from a good drive at about 4mbps. Definitely not 480mbps or close to the expected rates of around 350mbps.)
Today is the umpteenth time I've used the cradle, but the first time for an "emergency." I arrived at work this morning with my Mac Pro turned off (I leave it on 24/7 because I access it remotely quite often). I figured the power went out last evening and I went to restart it. Nothing. I fiddled with the power button, unplugged the machine, plugged it into a different electrical outlet, used a different power cord, and ran through a few procedures you use for getting Mac Pros to start if it is a simple memory board problem. Nada. I do regular backups of my two main machines now (a MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro), so I wasn't all that worried... except I had written two letters last night that I needed for work today. I spent quite a bit of time composing them, so I didn't want to go through the trouble all over. After AppleCare Phone support provided more aggravation than help (buy the AppleCare plan and find out you still have to hand deliver a Mac Pro for service and deal with an agent who obviously hasn't listened to any of the attempts I made before calling to revive the machine), I popped open the case, pulled the main drive and plopped it in the cradle. I navigated to my home directory and mounted my FileVault image ('hdid ./.snfettig.sparseimage'; enter password; access files through finder...) and grabbed the two files I needed. Done.
I can say that from the numerous backups I've pulled off drives with this cradle, I'm extremely happy with the performance and size. The fact that it will accept both 3.5" and 2.5" drives makes it all the more convenient. If you're a tech who uses drive caddies for any reason - and find that you have a lot of SATA drives you connect to - I highly recommend the cradle. Despite the relatively high price, the cradle is solid and makes life oh' so easy on days like today.